Failed presidential candidate and former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani told Bill O’Reilly on Wednesday Hillary Clinton helped found ISIS, now the Islamic State.
“She helped create ISIS,” Giuliani said. “Hillary Clinton could be considered a founding member of ISIS.”
O’Reilly asked Giuliani what made Clinton responsible for the creation of the terror group.
“By being part of an administration that withdrew from Iraq. By being part of an administration that let [former Prime Minister Nouri al-] Maliki run Iraq into the ground, so you forced the Shiites to make a choice. By not intervening in Syria at the proper time. By being part of an administration that drew 12 lines in the sand and made a joke out of it,” Giuliani said.
In fact, the presence of the United States in Iraq and the direct efforts of the Pentagon created a group led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi that would become IS and eventually ISIS well before Obama was president and Clinton Secretary of State.
In January 2006 al-Qaeda in Iraq merged with several other Sunni Wahhabi groups to form ad-Dawlah al-ʻIraq al-Islāmiyah, which translates as the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI). In 2013 the group moved into Syria and became ad-Dawlah al-Islāmiyah fī ‘l-ʿIrāq wa-sh-Shām, or ISIS. The following year the State Department decided the group’s name was the “Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant,” or ISIL.
Excluded from the government narrative is the fact military intelligence at the Pentagon developed a multi-billion dollar campaign to combat indigenous Iraqi groups fighting against the occupation. Part of this effort was the deliberate magnification of al-Zarqawi, at the time a marginal figure in the resistance who formed an al-Qaeda breakaway group. An internal Pentagon document states ”the Zarqawi PSYOP program is the most successful information campaign to date.”
In 2006, The Washington Post reported: “A goal of the campaign was to drive a wedge into the insurgency by emphasizing Zarqawi’s terrorist acts and foreign origin, said officers familiar with the program. ‘Through aggressive Strategic Communications, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi now represents: Terrorism in Iraq/Foreign Fighters in Iraq/Suffering of Iraqi People (Infrastructure Attacks)/Denial of Iraqi Aspirations,’ the same briefing asserts…”
After al-Zarqawi was allegedly killed in 2006 his group joined other Sunni insurgent groups to form the short-lived Mujahideen Shura Council. The following year the Islamic State of Iraq was established and, under the leadership of a former US detainee, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, joined the fight in Syria in 2011.
A leaked DIS document states “there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist Principality in eastern Syria (Hasaka and Der Zor), and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime.” The document is proof the DIA was actively working with Salafist groups, including the Islamic State.
Giuliani is merely repeating the government narrative on Iraq and Syria, as should be expected of a political operative. Hillary Clinton is not the founder of the Islamic State, the Pentagon, and the CIA are (the CIA’s involvement stretches back to Afghanistan and the covert war against the Soviets; al-Zarqawi joined the CIA organized and Saudi-financed Mujahideen as the war against the Soviets was winding down in the late 1980s).
Hillary Clinton is of course not blameless—her role in the Benghazi “rat line” helped arm the Islamic State—but she is hardly the founder of the group.
Giuliani is simply playing politics and further obfuscating the truth, as should be expected behavior from a seasoned insider.
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